La Rochelle - un coin de la cour de la commanderie

After the death of his mother in February, 1851, Corot traveled to Arras, Brittany and Normandy. In July, he went to La Rochelle with fellow painters Brizard and Philippe Comairas, lodging with a local merchant and painting frequently with his friends. After staying in La Rochelle for three weeks, the artist returned to Paris with one oil painting, Vue du port de La Rochelle and several oil studies, entirely painted on-site. This group of La Rochelle images has been largely regarded as the most Impressionistic of Corot's oeuvre. In fact, the present work was once owned by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
In a letter to the art dealer René Gimpel in 1918, Renoir wrote: 'There you have the greatest genius of the century, the greatest landscape artist who ever lived. He was called a poet. What a misnomer! He was a naturalist. I have studied ceaselessly without ever being able to approach his art. I have often gone to the places where he painted: Venice, La Rochelle, ah, what trouble they've given me! It was his fault, Corot's, that I wanted to emulate him. The towers of La Rochelle - he got the color of the stones exactly, and I could never do it' (René Gimpel, Journal d’un collectionneur marchand de tableaux, Paris, 1963, entry for March 20th, 1918, p. 28).